How long did the Nentón fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 March 2017 to 17 April 2017 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 April 2017 to 11 April 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,160 hectares (11.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Nentón (1,166 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guatemala (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

GT · Guatemala · 2017-03-27 → 2017-04-17

Nentón fire, March 2017 Nentón

Out · last detection 17 Apr 2017, 19:29 UTC

The fire started on 27 March 2017 in Nentón, Guatemala, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,160 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Huehuetenango since 2016 (of 17 with a page). Number 22 in Guatemala in 2017, of 36.

The power measured by the satellite is low (10.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jacaltenango · 2026 San Mateo Ixtatán · 2024 San Mateo Ixtatán · 2024 Soloma · 2024

Burnt area: 1,160ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 27 Mar 2017 – 17 Apr 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 27 Mar; 2017
Heat detections: 48; in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 14MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Mar17 Apr

Play back 17 Apr 2017

How it evolved, day by day

27 Mar 1 Apr 4 Apr 10 Apr 13 Apr 17 Apr

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high

55km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.0 mm on 17 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (12 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Nentón where it started

1,166 ha reached on 27 Mar

1.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
3 Apr	32.5 °C	24 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
4 Apr	32.1 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
5 Apr	33.1 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
6 Apr	28.1 °C	55 %	55 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 17
7 Apr	27.8 °C	48 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
8 Apr	28.1 °C	48 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
9 Apr	29.4 °C	39 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
10 Apr	29.8 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
11 Apr	27.9 °C	41 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
12 Apr	25.6 °C	49 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
13 Apr	27.0 °C	47 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
14 Apr	26.6 °C	52 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
15 Apr	27.9 °C	44 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
16 Apr	26.9 °C	53 %	35 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 15
17 Apr	27.5 °C	53 %	29 km/h	5.0 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

↔

Before · 20 Mar 2017

After · 24 Apr 2017

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 48Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.

⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.

Date and time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Guatemala ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nentón fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 March 2017 to 17 April 2017 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 April 2017 to 11 April 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,160 hectares (11.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Nentón (1,166 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guatemala (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 122 · 123 · 1566 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

CONRED ↗
INAB · Instituto Nacional de Bosques ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 11 April 2017 → 17 April 2017.
25 October 2026 Start date: 3 April 2017 → 27 March 2017.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 122 · 123 · 1566.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 April 2017 to 11 April 2017. 48 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.

Where it burned